A first impression of Deadly 30
In which there is racism and a lot of rage at silly AI
I enjoy sidescroller shooters. I really do. I don't get to play enough of them, which is why I decided to pick up Deadly 30. It looked pretty fun: a sidescrolling shooter with defense elements and multiple characters with upgrades (and believe me when I say i love dem upgrades). The game started well enough: after a short intro, the American character stumbles into a small shack which he must defend from a voracious hoard of green zombies. Kill the zombies, get pieces of junk to make bigger guns, unlock bigger guns by killing zombies and getting experience, survive 30 days...Seemed all good to me. During the day time, you explore the area around you, shooting everything in your path to get aforementioned things. You can even find other survivors, whose dialogue portrays them as silly walking stereotypes of their respective countries. Around this time, I was getting some issues. The AI was decent during the day, as they would randomly take potshots at enemies in front and behind you, but at night during the defensive portions there were some issues. While I was playing the Russian Sniper (who talks obsessively about wrestling bears and borscht), my American army friend decided it was in his best interest to put his gun away and swing aimlessly at enemies from the roof of the shack. I was somewhat perplexed at this, as he had plenty of ammunition and enemies to shoot, so I selected him and tried to figure out what was wrong. In the two seconds that I controlled the American, the zombies had busted through the fences and murdered the crap out of me. I wouldn't be bothered by this so much if the NPC's had only been the death of me once, but for some reason they seem to have a phobia of getting headshots or conserving ammunition, and that was only when they felt like attacking. Granted, I can't hate on this game too much. The daytime walkarounds, while sinfully short, are still enjoyable in a mindless kind of way. There isn't much strategy involved: see zombie, crouch, shoot zombie, move on, repeat until night comes, leg it back to the shack. If the AI was better, then the night time bits would be significantly more enjoyable, or even if there was a command system where I could tell my guys to stay in one place and shoot anything that they see. That would be able to get rid of most of the AI issues This game is still in development though, so I guess we shall see if any improvements are made later.
In short, if you want to play a decent sidescroller shooter, you could get better, although not for this price ($5 on steam in the US). But, the controls are easy to figure out, the animations are decent, the guns sound nice, and it's cheap. If you can take the blatant racism (and if they improve the AI), it may just be a game worth getting.